Tag Archives: exhibiting

7 TRADE SHOW TIPS TO LEAD YOU TO EVENT SUCCESS

TRADE SHOW TIPS – WHY BOTHER?

Ensuring that you’ve got everything planned before attending a trade show is vital to seeing any kind of success from the event. These trade show tips are to help give you an idea of the kind of things that you need to consider before taking your business to a trade show/exhibition. Following the age old saying of “failing to plan is planning to fail” can go a very long way and trade shows are no exception. As we’ve attended plenty of trade shows ourselves, we’ve managed to pick up a few things and this list is to help prevent you making some of the mistakes that we have. So without further ado, we hope you enjoy our 7 trade show tips.

GET SOCIAL WITH IT

You’re probably all aware by now that social media is here and it’s going nowhere anytime soon. Announcing that you’ll be attending a trade show and posting reminders is a great way to make sure that people are aware that you’ll be there. Another effective way to use social media for trade shows is to live tweet the event. Twitter is perfect for live, hot off the press news and being at the forefront of that is a surefire way to ensure that everyone at the trade show and/or following it will know you. This can even warm all of the visitors to your stand before they even speak to you.

DON’T GO ALONE

This could be one of the most helpful trade show tips you receive, if you’ve never been to a trade show before, you won’t realise how busy they can get. If you go to the exhibition on your own, you risk leaving your stand unattended, especially when you decide that you’d like to visit some of the other stands dotted around the trade show and who wouldn’t want to? Taking someone with you and rotating roles will help speed up your set up times and enable you to interact with many more people.

PREPARATION IS KEY

Another vital thing to do is to make sure that you’re well prepared. Put together a checklist before your trade show to ensure that you will have everything once you get there. The last thing that you want to do is search for something that you need and then realise that you haven’t taken it with you. Check everything and tick it off to be sure that you have everything and arrive at the event early. This will give you time to set up and deal with any issues that may arise before the trade show is in full swing.

THIS IS THE STAND THAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR

Your display plays a massive part to exhibiting at a trade show, the second to a good display stand is well-presented representatives from your business. We highly recommend that you work closely with your designer and printer on your trade show display. A designer will have the eye and knowledge to ensure that there isn’t a lot of noise with your designs. They’ll also have the expertise in highlighting what your business does clearly and in a visually stimulating way. Discussing your printing options with your printers is also very beneficial, this is because printers naturally know print very well. They can recommend what they think you should use and help advise you on your options. If you already know what you want that’s brilliant, but if not, speaking with a designer and printers will be something that you won’t regret doing. If you’re designing your display internally be sure to keep your designs simple, bold and easy to read. You don’t want your visitors to be bombarded with clutter and just not bother looking at your display that you’ve paid good money for.

EXCLUSIVES

Another great thing to provide at your event is an exclusive offer, promotion, competition, etc. This will give your stand visitors a sense of exclusivity which can lead to impulse decisions. Put a lot of thought into what you’d like to offer to them as you want it to be something that gives them genuine value or they’ll see right through you, especially if your target audience is attending the event.

DATA, DATA, DATA

One of the most important trade show tips is to ensure that you’re collecting information and contact details about the people who visit your stand. You can do this by simply asking people as you interact with people, but an additional entertaining way to obtain information is to hold a competition. You could create a game where people put their business cards into a jar to enter or hold a raffle that requires a business card to be passed onto you to be entered into it. The more creative you are, the better the results will be. This is because it’s more appealing to people when compared to openly asking if you can have their information and potentially coming across as a little forward.

FOLLOW UPS

Last on this list and of course, we couldn’t forget this one. You’re most likely looking to attend a trade show to obtain more business and build relationships up with your prospects, so why forget about them after the trade show has ended? From all of the information that you collect as mentioned in the previous tip, you can use this to get back in touch after a couple of weeks and even dabble in some email marketing, referencing the trade show. If you are going to use email marketing, be sure to have an unsubscribe button to give people the chance to opt out of future emails from you. The chances are that you’ll have to keep in touch to nurture the relationships that you created at the trade show but as long as you’re patient, you’ll start to see results coming through after a while.

ROUNDING IT OFF

To round all of these trade show tips off, we’re going to give you a couple of reminders. So in summary, to have a successful trade show, you need to be sure to:

Use social media to your advantage and live tweet and/or use social media platforms like Periscope to even live stream the event to be at the forefront of the event.

Take someone with you to avoid an abandoned stand.

Get prepared and make sure that everything is ready for the event to prevent stress once you arrive to setup.

Make your stand is as visually appealing as possible through good communication with your design team and/or outsourced designer and printers.

Offer exclusives to give people a reason to visit your stand and take part in what you’re offering.

Collect information that you can use to follow up with people after the trade show has finished. Use competitions and games to offer a fun alternative way to collect the information that you can use for email marketing and follow ups.

Lastly, thank you for taking the time to read this blog post and we hope that we’ve given you some food for thought for your trade show. We wish you the best of luck with your event and if you take into consideration these trade show tips, we’re confident that you’ll have a great time and a successful event. If you liked this, please share it so it can help others out there looking for help with their trade shows.